Big Beat Steve

Back from another secondhand record clearout sale at one of about two brick-and-mortar shops that still handle vinyl here. Each LP went for 2.50 euros (some even less). Apart from a load of 70s/80s reissue LPs mostly by the big'uns (mostly Ellington and Armstrong for me - stuff off the obvious ones so some gaps were conveniently filled now, including a 2-LP set with the Duke's 1940 Fargo, N.D. concert), some nice original/early pressings from the 50s/early 60s cropped up too: A bunch of 10-inchers at 2 euros each, most in surprisingly clean condition: - Erroll Garner "Plays for Dancing" (Dutch Phillips) - Benny Goodman "Swing Session" (Carnegie Hall excerpts) (Dutch Phillips) - have the music of course but that period cover ... - Teddy Wilson Trio and Gerry Mulligan Quartet (DSC - Geman record club edition) - an oddball: Sidney Bechet "en 16 tours" (French Vogue) - to the best of my knowledge the only jazz record apart from that handful of Prestiges ever released for 16rpm turntable speeds. Had that record already but now have a vinyl in slightly better condition. And the seocnd copy no doubt will find a taker who'll appreciate that kind of oddity ... Now for the 12-inchers. - Eddie Bert "Modern Moods" (Jazztone 12-inch) - Louis Armstrong "At the Crescendo Vol. 1" (UK Brunswick) - Stephane Grappelly "Django" with Pierre Cavalli, L. Petit, G. Pedersen and Daniel Humair (Barclay) - Lionel Hampton "The Mess Is Here" (Bertelsmann) German 1958 recordings issued by the record club. Already have the record but with a cover in rather worse condition, but that poorer cover is the fold-out version whereas this pressing has a standard jacket. Probably VERY slightly later pressing. Both records in comparable condition. Now which pressing do I keep? Probably both ... And then some where the covers are just so-so (ah, those U.S. cardboard covers just can't take wear... ) but the vinyl is distinctly better: - Ella Fitzgerald "Mack The Knife" (U.S. Verve) - The Mastersounds "Play Compositions by Horace Silver" (U.S. World Pacific) - Manny Albam & His Jazz Greats "West Side Story" (one of those period pressing oddities - which seem to have existed with quite a few labels - where the locally pressed vinyl, in this case German Coral, was sold inside the thick U.S. (Coral) sleeve) Anyway, not a bad scoop at 2.50 euros maximum each, I think ...

What or who is it that you would call "fillers"? The less obvious artists/tracks? Isn't that a "problem" with lots of the larger boxes, including those of major artists/labels, up to BN or Trane and all their epigones? Nobody turns out only top notch material all the time and there almost invariably is a share of "also rans" (unless you are in an inveterate fan, which is who this kind of boxes usually is aimed at anyway - and diehards willo find something of interest in almost anybody and anything - which IMO is a valid point as long as THEY are satisfied, and if it wasn't so exceedingly obscure singles that at the time sold only some 100 or 200 copies wouldn't fetch those top dollars now ) YMMV (widely) indeed. ;)

Had no idea either that he was still around. R.I.P. and thanks for all those 1947 Just Jazz concert recordings and some mighty fine Wardell Gray preserved for posterity!

Thanks for all this info, Onxidlib, about how BE! Records basically works. In fact the gist of what you say was confirmed to me yesterday by a friend of mine who also is in a position to know at least to some extent. Suffice to say to others reading this that if you press your vinyl in Germany by a German company (Pallas), as BE! Records do, then GEMA (the instance taking care of mechanical copyright fees etc. here) will be involved and you cannot avoid paying up for your releases because GEMA will check on what copyrights (if any) there are. So once the GEMA has an eye on you the musicians' copyright question cannot be avoided anymore either. That the GEMA system is not a very fair one and the money you pay to them does not fully benefit the small or obscure artists (least of all those for whose releases you pay) but is distributed in a pretty odd way that tends to make the big ones bigger is another matter of discussion but this is beyond the control of ANYBODY releasing/reissuing records. Anyway, I'll be looking forward to receiving the MOD box set which should arrive any day now (had found a source where the price was a bit lower so took the plunge after all). P.S. One detail about your initial post, Onxidlib, though: I doubt that the copyright protection in Luxembourg is different form the "rest" of the EU, at least not according to what several online souces from Luxembourg say.

Not that likely if that many "name" artists are involved that are either still around or do have an estate right here where these records are being produced, pressed and distributed. Too hot to handle if there was anything blatantly seedy. The jazz scene isn't that big here and it IS transparent enough. And the "new" European copyright laws that establish a non-movable cutoff date of what remains within the copyright at the year 1962 have been discussed enough here to be known to everybody. I see you have objections about all this as a matter of principle. Tell me, then, what is your interpretation of why there is the mention "Not for sale outside Japan" on those Japanese reissues that forumists around here (NON-Japanese, of course, and resident outside of Japan) buy up by the PETERBILT load all the time? Could it be that originally they just aren't licensed for sale outside the island as per whatever royalty agreement (if any) has been worked out for their (domestic) reissue down there? Isn't it about time to cut out those double standards in discussions like this that turn in circles only and lead nowhere anyhow? Anyway ... maybe I'll get a chance to grab the MOD box set and see if and to what extent the Gigi Campi estate has given its blessing to that undertaking. Doing a 120-page book on 11 original releases takes some sleuthing to unearth stuff that doesn't just "circulate" around.

I'm talking about pre-1960 stuff (which is what the MOD and Jutta Hipp and rockabilly reissues are all about) and it is ONLY THOSE that I am judging (admittedly mainly because those are about the only ones I'd be seriously interested in beyond what I already have). I won't be judging the others/more recent ones and if he gets himself into hot water about those because there WOULD be ground for legal action then he's had it coming to him and I won'tbe pitying him. I was surprised to see the Barney Wilen title because I was under the impression there were other reissues of that LP around. OTOH if, as you say, no owner would have been interested in properly licensing those titles anyway then this raises certain other questions. Anyway, looking at his catalog, royalty payments or not, this does not look like the typical "throw-together-and-run" stuff that someone would press up to make big bucks on the royalty-free grey label market. The work that went into these reissues goes beyond what even legit labels would do (let's face it, they just couldn't care less, and even that is putting it kindly ...). Cf. the MOD box set, or the Joki Freund LP (very nicely done cover artwork taking up the Michael Naura Brunswick LP artwork, looks almost like a facsimile reissue. Too bad I have a mint copy of the MUZA LP and a very clean copy of the Jazztone 45 too, and I can live without the two remaining tracks, I guess ;). Or the very fitting artwork of the "Modern at the German Jazz Festival 1966" LP sets. As these are unreleased recordings, how would he have gotten those for release (and why didn't anybody else tackle them?)? Enough of those name artists are still around (Doldinger etc.) so if this had been an all-out bootleg ripoff deal the German jazz scene would be far too small to avoid having the lawyers breathe down your neck.

Very nice, and one of those cases where you wonder if you still ought to be tempted even if you already have about 80% of the contents in other forms. Decidedly there seems to be much more to Be! Records than you'd think at first sight. They have made a splash here with their regional Rockabilly (Texas and Michigan so far) box sets (though there have been discussions about the digital sources of part of the recordings used) and this is where the people behind the label come from (I know the guys fleetingly). Amazing there are others who straddle the fence from rockabilly to 50s/60s Eurojazz. I wasn't aware of their MOD Records box set either. As for the "licensing department " angle, all the Jutta Hipp material obviously is in the Public Domain in EUROPE, so that's that ... And at least in the rockabilly section, with their box sets they have gone to great lengths there in documenting recordings that NONE of the U.S. guys or labels have seen fit to touch to any great extent for decades, let alone reissue coherently. It took Europeans to cover that ground (starting with Cees Klop from (Dutch) White Label Records). And even though a good deal of the material now on the MOD label box set has been reissued on CD on the Jazz Realities label some 15 years ago you've got to hand it to them - they went the whole way and left no stone unturned, it seems. Not something some shady label out to make a fast buck would do that way. How many diehard MOD label fans (keen to shell out for the whole package) can be out there after all?

Never mind the legs. Moot point. Anyway, "it ain't the meat, it's the motion ..." As for what came first and what impresses you more or less, YMMV. I remember my first exposure to this kind of setting vocals to solos came via Manhattan Transfer (what else in those late 70s ... ) but I had heard the actual instrumental recordings and solos before, and I cannot remember that I liked the vocals any less. Except that sometimes they appeared a little gimmicky to me (nothing wrong with that either, you don't always have to take in your jazz in graaaaave earnest and high-brow seriousness - in fact, not often, really ...). Later on I discovered where MT had come from (and learned to appreciate the "originals" and others in that vein, e.g. Eddie Jefferson).

Taken in moderate doses - fine with me. As for some lyrics attempting to be hip in a contrived way, I tend to see them as a sign of the times and in the context of the times and all of a sudden they usually become quite bearable ...

Dude, I was not yet 20 either! And apart from the fact that I could turn off those stations at will too, I did not dissect the music that much either, I just saw and heard that that those shlocky 50s-60s background music orchestras were terrible company for anybody resembling a jazz artist. The only thing I DID think about was what on earth they pulled all those orchestras from the mothballs for - and who'd listen to that all day in those years in the mid-to late 70s on THAT station. And all this because I used to go to great lengths to search for stations and programs that did NOT just doodle off the chart fare off the days but specialist programs for those into jazz, blues, pre-1960 r'n'r etc. Not a matter of rebellion but of musical tastes off the beaten tracks of the day's charts. And then you come across a station where they doodle "Theme From A Summer Place" or "Song From Moulin Rouge" and all that stuff and you wonder WTF??? And JAMAL's piano sounds sure got drowned there in the mix. That's all but has left a lasting impression. Maybe what they played by him really were those "For Airplay Only" records ...

Interesting and welcome for this season (and the ghostly weather here today) ... But except for the title word I cannot quite see the "Ghost of a Chance" connection with the subject matter, contrary to including Wardell Gray and his mysterious death (though at first sight I had wondered about that selection too, until I read your explanation). Wouldn't some music from "theme albums" for the occasion have been fitting too? Such as Sadik Hakim's "Witches, Goblins etc."

Yes, great story. But still that particular AFN FM mix really was wearing you out. Learning standards that way (or hearing age-old hits you at that time mainly remembered having seen in PRE-r'n'r pop chart hit listings) may be fine but if the standards are drowned in saccharine, string-overloaded arrangements by the likes of Hugo "Funny how the Yanks pronounce this un-yankish name" Winterhalter or "Where did your first name go" Mantovani etc etc. then all this is just a bit too much - at least to this listener who at that time, though not yet 20, on the one hand had already been very much aware of and fascinated by both pre- and post-war swing and jazz big bands and therefore had enough MEATIER (yet still perfectly accessible) stuff to cut your teeth into, and on the other hand abhorred the pre-r'n'r or "adult" pop chart fare. And Jamal, though pleasant to listen to really fit too easily into the stream of sounds and therefore, to me anyway, his jazz interest was drowned out in that program (which did indeed hold the occasional jazz surprise, which is why I sometimes listened to it). And I still wonder what the target AFN listener audience was for that program at that time. Those who'd have embraced those sounds wholeheartedly must have retired from active duty by that time and gone back home. And the young GIs had either endless streams of country/rock programs (often rather interesting to us, BTW), the R&B (aka soul/funk) charts as well as "Gozar" for the Latinos on AFN AM. So ...? Anyway .. that Jamal debate reminds me of a lot of other piano trio LPs from the 50s/60s that tended to get short shrift in Down Beat reviews. And possiblx even today. Seems like the court is still out on how approachable or even nightclub-ish or lounge-ish you can get without seeing your jazz credentials tarnished, and a consensus probably will never come to pass (maybe for the better because tastes differ ..).

Doesn't play here either (performance copyright issues, as usual when the Big Ones among the label rights holders are involved). But never mind - I've got several LP's worth of TD music from those post-war years (including the original Hep LP release of "At The Fat Man's") so can imagine what else there is on those CDs. A band that wasn't as old hat as its name might have led some to believe.

It does. But if he gets programmed on radio in between Percy Faith, Hugo Winterhalter, Nelson Riddle, Mantovani and similar easy listening acts from way back (no kidding! Happened here over and over again on AFN FM which at that time - late 70s - went on for hours and hours on a strict background elevator music diet - "Music to soothe your drilll sergeant to??" ) and indeed he segues seamlessly in and out in between the other acts then you do get second thoughts about the jazz content.

No idea why Pt. 2 became the hit. To the best of my recollections (saw a review of the 45 the other day in a period copy of Orkester Journalen) the actual single of course had "Topsy Pt. 1" b/w "Topsy Pt. 2". So Pt. 1 very much was there but somehow fell by the wayside as far as the charts were concerned.

Same experience here as with Teasing's initial statement. I've been buying vinyl since 1975 (age 15), this slackened off a bit in the first half of the 80s (due to shortage of student funds), gained momentum again thereafter, peaked in the 90s and 2000s, first during the shift towards CDs when many unloaded their vinyl at secondhand shops, and later on when some local record stores got in HUGE secondhand collections (allegedly 100,000 items in one case) and sold off lots of the "older" styles (i.e. pre-hard bop) fairly cheaply for a time. These sources have dried up in recent years so my vinyl buying has slowed down again (shelf space is running out anyway ;)). The way I observe it, apart from obvious top price sellers such as Blue Notes and some other collectable labels, older repressings of collectable records tend to go up in price here too, as do Japanese reissues. Liberty (and similar) pressings of BNs remain lower-priced than earlier deep groove pressings, of course, but considering what they are and ought to be treated like, they look expensive to me. Overall, a lot of older/earlier on labels a bit under the radar as well as Japanese pressings can stil be found in the 30 to 50 euros price bracket but often this still seems too expensive to me for what these records are. And except when foreign collectors come in on one of their buying sprees (like I did in London in the 90s) they seem to sit in the racks for ages at the one local recrod store that still has a huge vinyl section (including jazz). Strangely their stock of swing-era and 40s recordings has diminished considerably in recent times. Maybe those retro-minded lindy hop dancers (there is a small but thriving local scene) do buy vinyl again after all and don't just do CDs and downloads?

Agreed. BTW, that Japanese Prestige book I mentioned earlier lists that tune as "Chasin The Bongo" under LP 171 but as "Chasin The Boogie" under the 78rpm entry. Label misprint on the 78? Anybody got a copy of that one? I just wonder what made Jepsen list this as "Tea For Two". The theme IS very similar but how did that title come about? Maybe Jepsen never saw the actual 78s and was just given tape dubs to listen to (and to identify because the track titles were omitted?). Funny things happened to discographers in those pioneering days. Neither Jepsen nor others could have listened to or even seen all of the records they included but had to rely on contributors. In some cases they seem to have given him entire listings of labels that had jazz-related R&B recordings but nobody seems to have bothered to listen to the records to filter out the actually relevant ones. And so some full-fledged rockabilly records found their way into Jepsen's books (just because they were on labels that had lots of R&B, such as Sun)!

Well, "Chasin' The Bongo" (as listed on the OJC CD) does not sound very boogie-ish to me at all but like a(nother) mambo indeed. MG, what's your opinion? BTW, Jepsen's discography (which of course is not without errors but was a major, REALLY major accomplishment in its day IMO) lists this track of Prestige 897 as "Tea For Two", and actually the theme of "Chasin' .." does have some similarities ...

I'll need to check some sources to refresh my memory, but I want to say that Columbia (for one, at least) was still issuing 10" LP's in the U.S. in the latter 50's. Speaking of Columbia, here's one that I always thought was a bit odd. The Buck Clayton LP "How Hi The Fi" was issued as a 12" LP in 1954, and the 10" version of the LP came out later, in 1955. There may have been other cases of this backward scenario, but I'm not sure I know of any. Interesting ... I have both but of course automatically assumed that the 10-inch LP was the earlier pressing/release. So CL 567 predated CL6326? Did you get these release dates from the Goldmine Price Guide? Not that I would want to distrust them but yet ... I don't have any documents to actually pin down their release dates, but just one pointer (maybe): I have a record mail order catalog from Al Smith's House of Jazz (South Bend, IN) from around that time (the most recent Blue Note LP listed is BL 5020, if that helps ..), and in the Columbia section the CL 6000 series runs up to CL 6302 and the CL 500 series ends at CL 521. I have no idea how many LPs were released in each series within the same time span but this looks like the 10-inch series was closer to CL 6326 (24 items) than the 12-inch series was to CL 567 (46 items). No definite proof one way or another, of course ..,

Fine research! Hats off! N.B: Is it Chasin The Boogie or rather Chasin' The Bongo as listed in several (post-78rpm release) sources?.

VERY interesting thread. Thanks for your introductory post, MG, which will take time for me to digest fully and maybe get back to, though ... Some random thoughts and addenda: - As for 10-inchers not being "albums", I dunno ... Often it was a matter of making existing (and still saleable) recordings available in the new 33rpm format which was gaining momentum fast (hence the reissue of 78s early on on 10" LPs). I wonder, though, if what you refer to as "albums" really would be "concept albums" (à la Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds, etc.). I doubt that that much thought went into all of those "albums" that were used to release music for the FIRST time. And, BTW, I do wonder, how many record buyers of more recent times realize where the term "album" (as used generically for LPs) came from in the first place. - 10-inchers did exist in the U.S. beyond the West Coast Jazz labels and Blue Note and Prestige in the 50s. If you look at record listings such as in the Goldmine books you will see how many there were, even in jazz bordering on R&B. Not to forget all those budget labels. To me this also seems a matter of trying to grab a slice of the market of the new speed and in the case of R&B, C&W and Rn'R of the 50s this probably was only limited in numbers (as were 12" LPs) because the marketing execs figured (probably correctly) that their (younger or not so well-off) target audiences usually would only be able to afford purchases of singles or EPs at one time. - As for their general impact, MG, do not forget that 10-inchers lasted much longer in a number of other countries, e.g. the U.K. and France - and Germany too, to some extent) where ORIGINAL 10-inch releases were still current in the late 50s. - It is true what was said above about the "speed war" (particularly 33rpm 12in LPs vs 45rpm 3-EP sets ;)) but there also seems to have been a "size war". There have been LPs issued concurrently both in 10-inch and 12-inch format for diffferent target audiences and possibly countries (I am not talking about expanded 12" reissues of original 10" releases here). Apparently the drawback of having to omit part of the contents of the 12" LP on a 10" was offset by the advantage of having the music in the convenient (?) 10" size.

Well, MG, as far as I can see the track listing on the CD seems to be in the correct order (comparing the track sequence on the CD to the sequence of the track titles on the "cover"/inlay. Of course, if you want to really rip what you have in the order that it appeared on the 10-inch vinyl then there IS a problem (it took me a second or third reading of your earlier posts to grasp that ... ;)). The only explanation that I have is that there were two pressings, probably the first one incorrect and the second one correct. Or the music on the vinyl always was correct but was misidientifed on the cover (which tended to happen, it seems) and also on the label, maybe because someone mistook the session by Joe Holiday including Billy Taylor on one of the two sides for a leader date by Billy Taylor? The answer to this would have to come from someone who has a copy of LP 171. Or maybe there was a review of that LP in Down Beat or Metronome? No doubt they would have noticed an entire LP side that was identified incorrectly, particularly if the tracks had been around on 78 before? And if they did not mention this then this might indicate that that LP indeed had one side without Joe Holiday.

Interesting ... Joe Holiday ... I have been intrigued by his recordings for some time because they seemed to have been overlooked by the reissuers so very constantly throughout the vinyl era when almost every snippet of 50s Prestige was recycled in more than one form. In the past 7-8 years I finally managed to obtain both his "Holiday for Jazz" CD on Fresh Sound and his "Mamob Jazz" CD on Prestige/OJC. Now I am not quite sure if I understood all your questions correctly. On my copy of the OJC CD the final 7 tracks are listed as coming from the 171 10-inch LP, and as far as I can tell the tracks are in this order (and they all have a tenor sax - i.e. Joe Holiday): Sleep - Besame Mucho - I Don't Want To Walk With You - Fiesta- I Love You Much - Chasin' The Bongo - It Might As Well Be Spring The Japanese "Prestige Book" published in the "Jazz Critique" series in the 1990s ("Jazz Critique 1996 No 3") gives the following track listing and (presumably) track order for LP 171: Sleep - Besame Mucho - I Don't want To Walk Without You - I Love You Much - Chasin' The Bongo - It Might As Well Be Spring Assuming that they just omitted Fiesta by error this would confirm the indications in the liner notes of the OJC CD. However, the OJC CD had already been released by the time the Japanese book was published (they mention the CD reissue) so who knows if this is where they got their information and not from the original 10-incher? Although THAT would uncommonly sloppy for Japanese jazz fanatics.

By coincidence I have original pressings of the "In Concert" and "Introducing" LPs (in very decent condition - not much popping and crackling to listen through to ;)) and this thread spurred me to listen to them again last night. I agree with with Teasing's (hey, where's the TK of your moniker? ) comment on Monk being pleasantly un-electric-bass-ish, and above all I really cannot find that the comments that many jazz scribes made back then (about the Mastersounds just riding high on the wave of the MJQ's popularity and there not being much more to them) are true at all. There is a certain overall similarity, of course, but it doesn't go that far and they certainly aren't as "brain-heavy" as the MJQ often was, and Buddy Montgomery is very much his own man IMHO.

Indeed. My mothers (yes - mothers, my mother and my stepmother that my father married after my mother's death) both worked in the applied art/ advertising art business and both had got started in the very early 50s. I have often browsed (and from time to time still do) through the stack of what must have been the German equivalent of "graphis" from the early 50s to the early 60s that I took over from them, and this must have forever influenced my eye for artwork from that period and what I like in artwork, including Jim Flora, Alex Steinweiss and many more.